As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Deb Burlingame Nails It

I'm not much for anniversary comments; anniversaries are, to an extent, for those engaged in sentimentalism. My emotional response to 9-11 is over; you can't deal with "Truthers" for as long as I have if you can't focus solely on facts and argumentation.

But Debra Burlingame is back with a spot-on editorial in the NY Daily News that hits on the anniversary and several other topics, and it's absolutely worth savoring:

The attacks were not a random act of violence or insanity. They were a deliberate and brutal act of war committed by religious fanatics engaged in Islamic jihad against the United States, all non-Muslim people and any Muslim who wishes to live in a secular society. Worse, the people who perpetrated the attacks have explicitly told us that they are not done.

Sept. 11 is a date that comes and goes once a year, but "9/11" is with us every day. The body count keeps rising - Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, London, Amman.

We now clearly know that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was part of the holy war against America. When we previously dismissed this as a random attack by crazy men and declared ourselves lucky that "only six lives were lost," we effectively disarmed ourselves. Eight years later, six became 3,000. While the comparison to other "tragedies" may help us cope with what has befallen us, we must resist being glib and intellectually careless.

Our fellow human beings were not "lost" in 1993 or on 9/11. They were torn to pieces. We must not give the enemy any quarter. We must confront the reality of their acts.

Exactly. The 9-11 Truthers are the Neville "Peace in our time" Chamberlains of the new millenium, determined to find good in our most implacable enemies. Chamberlain at least acknowledged that the Germans had invaded Poland.